This guy living his best weirdest life

Don’t forget treason!

I'm hoping the Galactic Federation's Prime Directive has a clause for imminent collapse, like any RATIONAL version would.

As someone who owns too many cowboy hats, pearl snap shirts, and works occasionally on my buddy's ranch, I appreciate that.

I actually don't mind the cosplay cowboys and usually turn the other cheek in matters of fashion because I just can't give a shit. But this is fucking idiotic.

Or: tell me you fantasize about sexual relations with your own children without saying it.

And, tellingly, not a single friend to eat with. Dude looks like he lost a bet.

Except not even Donald looks this garish.

Which is the worst condemnation that can be given by him.

While simultaneously putting up signs that read “Back the Blue”. Critical thinking is not their strong point.

And if you were to ask them why, their response: "To OwN tHe LiBs!!1! 🤪"

Youd think Irish boomers would be racist against the English, ya reap what ya sow and all that. The fuck did the Italians ever do to the Irish, the closest thing I can actively think of wad solved pretty fucken quickly by Niall of the Nine Hostages.

I'm one of the youngest at my lodge, and I feel this. It was very different when I first started. I'm building us a new website to help keep with the times, but there's only so much that can achieve.

I'm my time I've observed most people fall into one of two groups: those passionate about exploring the esoterica and symbolism, and those who treat it like a social club. The old guys are mostly in the second group, young guys are mostly in the first. I see much more interest in the craft itself among gen X and millennials.

I think as the older guys start passing on in the next 10-20 years, we'll begin to see a marked decline in that old head boomer bigotry as gen X becomes the old head. We'll probably continue see a decline in membership for a bit in the immediate future, but I think there will be much more retention of younger brothers as focus shifts from socializing to practice of the craft.

Some old dude tried to recruit me to the Freemasons back in the 00's. I noped the fuck out of there after I discovered the racism. Just because I look like one of you, doesn't mean I am one of you.

Good

Have you somehow been insulated from all the insane ramblings of trumpers for the last 9+ years?

They are trump shoes

that's a possibility, and if trump doesn't win this race, it's extremely unlikely the RNC runs him again, so the question is how many of those voters are unwavering trump supporters that would kill any chance of an RNC candidate winning again.

but it also just, doesn't feel super likely to me either, like we're talking about heavens gate level shit, which is possible, i think it's more likely that these people are simply delusional, and just stupid and misinformed, as harsh as that is.

that's a definite possibility. But i feel like a significant portion of these people would also be the kind of person where if i showed up with a shotgun, and told them it was unloaded, and then had them point it at themselves and pull the trigger they would end up blown to bits.

Like i feel like if you're this comprehensively mind fucked, you would be expected to be generally mind fucked as well, to recap, they believe the ENTIRE political apparatus is ENTIRELY corrupt and biased solely against trump.

And we do see some of this, jan 6th deniers like that google whistleblower buy just being general conspiracy theorists. But this would surely only account for like 10-20% of the vote at max. There has to be some universal reality between these people other than they're all literally fucking insane.

A thing that really bothers me, is that this isn't like vaccine shit where the data isn't super readily accessible, shit like jan 6th is heavily documented and just out there for you to watch and consume what actually happened. Which is why we see the "it was a psyop" people crop up, but these people are just legitimately insane.

The libs took the power and the control, they are evil.

i have never once seen any evidence of this being the case, every statement about this has been pure schizophrenia in my experience. This is also like, a fucking massive claim.

Their system is what accused, judged and sentenced Trump.

who actually committed crimes, numerous times, and is demonstrably corrupt.

And hopefully after Trump is elected he will fix our broken system that brought the libs to power. And they wont be allowed to power ever again.

he was president for a single term and did basically fuck all. He passed like 5 things.

Not my opinion of course, but I have friends that say exactly this.

it takes like 12 seconds to fact check ANY of these things. Why don't they do it?

Some people it is a sunk cost fallacy. They went all in on Trump in '16 as the outside, antiestablishment candidate. They alienated friends and family either emulating him or just repeating his insults. Then once alienated from friends family they found solace in other people who experienced similar outcomes. This only reinforced their ideas that they were right all along. Trump not only winning but being right about everything is the only way they think they will be vindicated. If Trump is right then sooner or later those that cut ties with them will come back. If Trump is/was wrong, then they are wrong and if they are wrong they have lost years with loved ones, maybe the rest of their lives with those people due to their actions. Trump is all they have now and they need him to win/be right.

yeah this seems like one of the more probable options for a percentage of them.

Others I think are just good old conspiracy weirdos. They may or may not have voted for Trump in '16, but Q Anon or Covid conspiracies or Pizzagate got them wrapped up and Trump is their winning hand. He is their way to unraveling some deep seeded conspiracy where all the bad things in the world are the fault of a few people like Bill Gates or George Soros. Trump is also their retribution for all the bad things that have happened and Trump plays into this saying they are after you but he is in the way.

i suspect this one has to be less than like 5% but it's definitely there.

Still others I think are people who are in the right wing news bubble. Decades of Fox news or Newsmaxx/OANN, combined with right wong talk radio of hearing how all Dems are evil or working with the literal Christian devil and Trump is the only person you can vote for. Third party candidates you probably never hear of and if all you see/hear is how good Trump is and any bad things happening to him is the fault of Dems then you have no choice but to vote for Trump. I mean would you vote for someone you thought was an avatar of evil?

i think this is probably the majority of it, but my fundamental problem here is that this has gone so far that these people MUST have a fundamental disconnection with reality. I.E. be delusional, because it literally takes 5 seconds of googling, catching a random clip of kamalas campaign, seeing some of the legislation that biden passed, seeing how trump just grenades everything at every chance he gets, jan 6th literally being an attempted coup? Like there are SO many possibilities for people to realize "hey something isn't right here" and they've either ignored ALL of them, or they simply don't believe any of them, making them delusional. So either these people literally don't interact with politics AT ALL outside of like three minutes a day. Or they're the type of person to go bomb a government building because someone on twitter said they rape babies in the basement. There's a fine line between "they just exist in the right wing sphere" and "the entire right wing sphere is a delusional cult" here. Fox news was also sued and lost the dominion voting machine case also, they SHOULD have heard about that, even as a fox news viewer. So either fox is twisting the truth and lying more (or the other outlets) or they literally do not see anything outside of these outlets.

Finally are probably the ones who I think literally want to be part of a dictator state. Trump is a means to an end. Project 2025 lays out their plans to usurp the entire government with sycophants. They would weild the levers of power to ensure they never have a serious opposition candidate again. The chants of “lock her up” will be replaced with actions. Anyone even remotely left of them would be in danger of being labeled a radical and in need of being arrested and likely never see the inside of a court room.

i think this is probably a subset of the first two. More than anything else.

Most probably hit a few of these but I think these are the major reasons people are for Trump despite his negatives. I think if you ask people though one of these will likely be the main reason.

yeah i would generally agree, but i'm concerned that this is still apparently at least 40% of our voter base? Like to me, it has to be SO far out there that 40% of the population genuinely cannot in good faith believe this. So either the vast majority of our population has the political acuity of a rock in front of a television, or they're all bad faith. And if it's the former... we're fucked. Politics was never meant to be this surface level. It's a functional mechanism for governing one of the largest countries by most metrics in the world. There is no "yeah it's probably fine" here for me. Another problem that i have is that this is all behind the functioning of fascism, which means a significant portion of our population is directly susceptible to literal fascism. That as far as i am concerned, is a failure of the american project.

that's possible but then these people are potentially classified as election interference causing people, as they aren't voting to vote anymore. But then again maybe that's good enough for democracy.

They’ll latch on to the next thing. May fracture into a bunch of weird offshoots

Ah, like Christianity.

so basically its just fascism, but america instead.

hm. Maybe? But they also think that trump is a legitimately good candidate, this isn't some accelerationist bullshit or anything.

Am a gay (sorta...trixic enby), and can confirm.

https://media.tenor.com/8zs_qRxrXjcAAAAM/can-confirm-katy.gif

Is there an expectation of privacy in a gym?

Yep, freedom of speech and freedom of press. You have no expectation of privacy in public, I have the right to take pictures of whatever I want in public (including of you).

I own the right to every photo I take, so I can publish whatever I want.

There are a few exceptions.

I use your likeness commercially without your permission, you can sue me for royalties and to force me to stop using your likeness, since you didn't have a contract with me to be used to promote. The more famous you are, the more you can sue for, because your likeness is worth more.

If I use your name or likeness to spread rumors or misinformation about you, or to attempt to cast you in a bad light, you can sue me for libel or slander, since I did reputational damage to you, you can exact monetary damage from me. The more famous you are, the harder it is to sue without proving obvious malice, because being famous comes with the expectation of being talked about publicly in weird ways.

For example, if I accuse my next door neighbor of being a child rapist by plastering fake wanted posters around the neighborhood, he could sue the shit out of me for slander, and I would have to prove that I had evidence to say such a thing. If I did the same thing to Trump, however, he would have to prove I was lying to get anywhere, which is why you never see him sue over that kind of thing.

23.99%* don't discount that 0.99! He got a great deal, don't you know!

And at least 1 piece of "We the People" somewhere along with 2 flags

The hat will likely be around $80 if he got it off Etsy instead of from a street vendor. Less than $60 total for the shirt and shorts unless he's been entirely ripped off or those shorts are much nicer than they look. So probably about $540 would be my guess before the tattoo sleeve. That cost anywhere from $600 if he got it done in his friend's garage and got an infection to several thousand bucks if he went to a really expensive artist. I have no guess for that.

Clothes were probably inexpensive for this professional cosplayer to make

Then it's extra sad.